Dahmer's Not Dead

by Edward Lee

  The answer, actually, was simple. She felt guilty because this was not like her by any means. Picking up men in bars? Anonymous, even emotionless sex? It wasn’t Helen’s style. If anything, she’d done it for distraction, and maybe even—in some symbolic way—to feel that she could still be attractive and desirable to men, almost as if she needed to prove something to herself. Worst part was, though, now that she’d gone and done it, she didn’t even care. She’d responded, she’d even climaxed, and she didn’t care…

  The bed still smelled like his cologne when she heaped the covers over herself. I’m never drinking again, came a dim thought behind the headache. I’m so stupid! It would be morning soon—technically it already was—and she’d have to drag herself up and into work. To reface vague evidence and Olsher’s sudden lack of confidence. And Dahmer.

  He’s out there, right now. And Campbell’s probably with him, helping him, staking out locations for him, driving him, maybe even picking up the new victims for him. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Most people knew what Dahmer looked like—especially now with his picture in every paper and tabloid. Unless Dahmer had disguised himself, he couldn’t walk the street.

  More support for her conviction that Campbell was the operative. The obsessee assistant, the apprentice who’d manufactured Dahmer’s “death,” orchestrated Dahmer’s escape, provided Dahmer with refuge, transportation, and the tools of his trade of murder.

  Dahmer, she thought, pining for sleep. But there was no safety even in sleep, was there? Dahmer ruled her life by day, and now he even marauded her sleep.

  She turned angrily in bed, and noticed only then the blinking red light on her answering machine. She didn’t even want to play it, didn’t care who had left the message.

  Tom? she wondered half-awake. Again, to hell with him. And why would he call anyway? Or—

  Damn it. Probably Beck. Maybe she’s got the tox screen done on Rosser’s blood…

  It was every effort to reach out and press the CALLS button:

  “You’ve reached Helen Closs,” she heard her own dry, spiritless voice. “I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number after the beep.”

  BEEP

  Silence.

  Then:

  A man’s voice. Atonal. Emotionless. A voice…she’d heard before, but never in person.

  A voice she’d heard on tv tabloid shows and the news.

  “It’s me,” the voice introduced itself.

  Helen’s eyes slowly opened, listened further—

  “It’s Jeff.”

  —and further.

  “Pleasant dreams.”

  The line severed with a click, and Helen’s heart seemed to come to sluggish, thudding halt.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “We got a ten-scale, one-hundred-percent match,” announced the tech, all spit and polish in his TSD monkey suit. A Gaines Systems Model 6-P Series Voice-Stress Comparator switched off. “It’s Dahmer’s voice.”

  It was just past six a.m. now, Helen, Beck, and Olsher stood moodily in the Criminal Evidence Section’s cramped EA lab—the EA for Electronic Analysis.

  Olsher chewed an unlit cigar. “Shit. Why should we even be surprised?”

  “Right, Chief,” Beck agreed, “but the surprising part is how he beat the line-trace.”

  Helen felt like she’d just been dumped out of a cement mixer: her hair messed, her clothes crumpled, her eyes sandy with lack of sleep. She hadn’t had time to even shower before hustling the cassette cartridge from her answering machine down to CES. And, no, it was no surprise that the voice on the tape matched Dahmer’s voice-print specs equalized out of his last tv interview. But beating the line-trace was a surprise. The days of telephone traces taking minutes were long over. It was all automatic now, every phone relay in the country fed through an array of traceable microprocessors, and each and every connection stored. It had only taken a Bell-Atlantic systems technician a matter of seconds identify the source of the call. And the source was this according to their relay computer: No source found. Source cell and service point not identified.

  “I always thought it was impossible to beat a line-trace in this day and age,” Helen grumbled.

  “Not impossible,” the tech corrected, shutting down his unit. “But damn near.”

  “How could it be done?” Helen asked.

  “It could be done with an encrypted mobile phone,” the tech postulated, “but that’s not likely in this case. We’re talking military-grade scramblers, stuff the Defense Department uses, and the C.I.A. This call here?” He tapped on the box. “Had to have been an on-line call fed through a particular S/C program.”

  Helen didn’t want to hear anymore technical stuff. “S/C program?”

  “A computer program with a shift-conversion utility,” the tech explained to no further comprehension.

  “We’re all dummies here, partner,” Olsher said. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a software program—probably made from scratch—that acts as a single-channel frequency shift-converter. Now, a call like that could be placed through any run-of-the-mill 9.6 baud telephone modem—something you can buy in any computer store. But the program itself? You can’t buy them anywhere; they’re banned by FCC, so that’s why I’m telling you the program was made from scratch, and by someone with serious computer expertise. A teckie, an expert hacker.”

  Olsher gnawed on his cigar, perplexed, turning to Helen. “Any evidence to suggest Dahmer was skilled with computers?”

  A memory floated, and a word. Computers. “No, Larrel,” she said. “Not Dahmer. But one of the first things North told me was that Campbell was a computer fanatic.”

  “Here we go with Campbell again.”

  Beck interjected. “Chief, face it. There is a Campbell, and he is directly involved. He helped Dahmer get out of prison, and right now he’s helping Dahmer continue his murder spree. Everything in this case points to an active conspirator. Campbell’s used his craft and ingenuity to do everything so far, and it’s obvious he’s the one who arranged this call and made it untraceable.”

  Thank you, Jan, Helen thought.

  “So why would Dahmer call Helen?”

  Beck made a frown. “Helen’s name is in the newspaper almost every day. They’ve broadcasted the fact that Helen’s running the investigation.”

  Olsher chewed on these considerations along with the cigar.

  “Look, I never said I didn’t believe your theory about a conspirator. I just wasn’t too hip on this Campbell guy, considering the source.”

  Now it was Helen’s turn to frown, but she said nothing.

  Beck went on, “And it’s starting to seem to me that maybe Campbell’s not the only conspirator.”

  “Why?” Olsher grunted.

  “Because there’s no Campbell at St. John’s Hospital,” Helen said, “and there can be no doubt that St. John’s is the location where Kussler’s dead body was switched with Dahmer.”

  “She’s right, Chief,” Beck plodded on. “Someone with hospital access has to be in on it too. Not only to take Dahmer out and leave Kussler’s body in his place after the ident process, but also because of Rosser.”

  “Rosser died in the same hospital,” Helen pointed out.

  “And I just got finished determining the cause of death.” Beck waved a dot-matrix printout from a tox-screen analysis. “Helen ordered me to do a blood run the minute we knew Rosser was dead. He was killed with a massive oral dose of succinicholine sulphate—the same drug being used to paralyze the victims.”

  Helen smiled to herself, while Olsher stared. “Good work, both of you,” he admitted. “Keep it up and keep me posted.” Then he left but from the lab entry waved Helen out into the hall.

  “What is it, Larrel?” Helen asked.

  “This bit about a second person, a second conspirator with hospital access?”

  “It makes a lot of sense,
Chief. Look, you didn’t buy the part about Campbell and now you’re admitting he exists. The same goes for a second collaborator, someone specifically tied to St. John’s.”

  Olsher rubbed his face. “I know, and that’s what bugs me. You know who fits the bill, don’t you?”

  Helen swallowed before she could answer. “Tom. I know. I’ve given that a lot of thought. He did the autopsy, he was the duty pathologist for Dahmer’s post, and he’d have access to the psych wing med unit. Rosser was on a lithium compound to treat his hyper-activity. Someone could easily have slipped into the nurses’ station and spiked Rosser’s lithium with succincholine.”

  “Shit,” Olsher said, impressed. “You have thought about this.”

  Helen felt less than resplendent revealing the rest. “He’s also had…affairs with men.”

  Olsher gaped at her. “Are you shitting—”

  “No, I’m not, and one more thing. He’s big into computers.”

  By now Olsher had nearly chewed the cigar to wet shreds. “Yeah. Keep an eye on him, Helen. And I mean a close eye.”

  ««—»»

  Everything was coming out to dry now. Beck had no problem accepting the credibility of Rosser’s lithium dose being poisoned with succinicholine. The precaution ward, true, had a nurses’ station behind the locked ward door and a 24-hour security guard, but the drug prescriptions for every patient on the unit were prepared at the main nurses’ station at the floor entrance. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a hospital employee to get in there quick, locate Rosser’s med cup, switch the real lithium capsule with a spiked one, and get out. It would only take a matter of seconds, Helen realized.

  But she’d still have to prove it, and that wouldn’t be easy. Tom may have assisted, but Campbell was still the key. She’d ordered CES to dust Kussler’s apartment for prints—Kussler and Campbell were lovers—at least before Campbell was loving enough to kill him—so it stood to reason Campbell’s prints would be there too.

  More dumb luck, though, when Beck brought in the results. Prints other than Kussler’s were indeed found all over the apartment, but none of those prints were on file.

  “You gotta figure, Captain, if Campbell’s smart enough to beat a phone-trace with a home-made software program, he’s definitely smart enough to know his prints aren’t on file,”

  Beck commiserated.

  Helen could only agree.

  “And, check this out,” Beck told her, opening a magazine. “Have you seen this? It came out a few days ago.”

  “I don’t read magazines, Jan. I don’t have time to read a fortune cookie.”

  The glossy cover shined up. Madisonian Magazine, a slick local-interest publication more prone to city-wide rumors and gossip than any real local interest. All big cities had them. Beck opened it toward the center, passed it to Helen.

  “Goddamn it.” Helen was getting to hate this. Here was a long article not as much about the Dahmer Case as about her. A fluff piece. Her academy graduation picture side by side with a snapshot of her leaving the Arlinger murder scene. Local girl makes good, she thought. What a bunch of tripe. The not-very-skilled writer, in genuine fluff style, went on to cite Helen’s education, proficiency ratings, even her age. What about my dress size, you schmuck! Why don’t you tell the readers what brand of tampons I use! She only scanned a few lines: “—a hallmark to modern womanhood, the highest success rate of any investigator on the State Police. Captain Closs, in fact, will be the first woman in the department’s history to make the rank of deputy chief.”

  Helen rose a subtle brow. Don’t be so sure.

  “Turn the page,” Beck said.

  “Oh, no!”

  “—but even the ever-busy investigator has time for a relationship. Who’s the handsome mystery man seen here with Closs after a date?”

  Helen gaped, aghast, at another snapshot. It was her and Tom, smiling and holding hands as they left Mader’s, downtown’s best German restaurant.

  “—our sources here at the Madisonian have identified him as Tom Drake, 38, the state’s Deputy Medical Examiner. Wedding bells on the horizon? We’ll never tell!”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake!” Helen griped. “And— How on earth did they get that picture?”

  “You know these tabloid mags,” Beck informed. “They send their photographers out to hide in the bushes. That guy probably staked you and Tom out, followed you to the restaurant, and then waited for you to come out.”

  Helen threw the magazine in the trash, infuriated, as Beck answered the phone. I ought to go down there and sue them! Helen thought. They have no right to print anything about my personal life! And that picture!

  But Helen’s ire lost all its steam once Beck hung up and turned to her. The gray-voiced news was becoming commonplace.

  “We’ve got another one,” Beck said.

  ««—»»

  The northside of the Circle, the outermost skirts of what was known as the gay district. Efficiency apartment, cramped but neat, reported to the police by a Fed-Ex man delivering a package—a mail order poplin jacket from the Home Shopping Club. He’d knocked on the door, which was ajar, and saw the body lying in the window light on the bed.

  Drug evidence was apparent: a gram of cocaine, a bag of pot, some cotton-covered thumb-caps of amyl nitrate.

  “Paone,” Beck ID’d. “First name Norman. ID was simple. Twenty-nine years old, a street hustler on the Circle.”

  “How do you know?” Helen asked, trying not to stare at the naked corpse. In spite of death, and in spite of winter, the body was tanned. Tanning salon, Helen guessed. Check out all the salons in town.

  “We just ran the guy’s name through Mobile Search. Rap sheet longer than one of Olsher’s cigars. Non-distro drug possession, check kiting, multiple busts for solicitation.”

  A prostitute, Helen thought.

  “Did a year and a half in Mad County Detent.”

  “Nothing at Columbus County?”

  “No. It was a three-year hitch. Early probation after fourteen months. Same old, same old.”

  “Any…” Helen glanced around. A tv, a VCR. North was in adult videos. “Any x-rated tapes on the premise?”

  “Nope, at least none that we could find as of yet. We’re still doing the prelim sweep. Why?”

  Helen felt too preoccupied to answer. Paone was a male prostitute. So is North…

  “Case parities?” Helen reeled off.

  “Identical m.o. I’ll do a tox workup, and Tom’ll do the post, but I can tell you right now it’s Dahmer.”

  Helen’s nostrils tweaked. “Is that—”

  “Cooking smells, Captain? Yes. Used utensils left in the sink. Nice of Jeff to leave them in the sink, huh? Like who’s going to clean them? Paone? The maid?”

  Helen’s expression remained fixed.

  Red-suited techs crawled on hands and knees, as Helen had seen so many times: vacuuming for hair and fibers, photographing schemes, dusting and fuming and UVing for latent fingerprints. Waste of time, Helen thought. It’s always the same.

  “Evidence of makeshift lobotomization,” Beck said, “just like Dumplin. Evidence of deep-cut striations with a sharp, edged implement. Collops of lean-muscle mass removed from the biceps and thighs, probably the parts that were…”

  Beck didn’t finish; she didn’t need to. The parts that were cooked, eaten, Helen finished in thought.

  “Fresh prints on the utensils and the note.” Beck spoke as an existentialist now, immune to the effects of human tragedy. Just like Helen. “I got a latent classifier here who’s run the point-scale—they’re Dahmer’s. Dahmer was here, Captain, and he was here in grand style.”

  “I need a crew of shoes out here to canvass,” Helen muttered more to herself. “Talk to the neighbors and all that. It must be Campbell at the very least picking Dahmer up afterwards.”

  “Yeah. I agree. But ten-to-one nobody saw anything, just like the first two. Dahmer may not be smart, but Campbell is. Anyway, Captain, let me show you the
note.” Helen followed the red-overalled woman to a cheap, put-it-together-yourself credenza. The note, as before, had already been sealed in lab evidence bag. But Helen could easily read the familiar, blue-felt penned handwriting.

  Captain Closs,

  He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.

  “More Bible stuff,” Beck said. “Well have to get the college on it.”

  “No we won’t,” Helen said, remembering her own theology classes. “It’s from Proverbs, a reference to adultery…and prostitution.”

  Beck’s mouth turned down as if impressed. “There’s more.”

  A whore is a deep ditch.

  Helen remembered that bit of scripture too. “Proverbs again.”

  And lastly:

  Remember the Great Bear of the north.

  “Don’t tell me,” Beck challenged. “You know that one too?”

  “It’s a reference to Revelations—or I should say The Revelation of…St. John the Divine.”

  “That’s uncanny. The same name of the hospital.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t get the rest. Bible scholars have always referred to ‘The Great Bear of the north’ as a reference to Russia.”

  Beck’s eyes drew wide with Helen’s. “Or maybe Dahmer isn’t referring to Russia at all—”

  “North,” Helen whispered to herself. “The Great Bear of the north.”

  “As in—”

  “Matthew North.”

  ««—»»

  So they were playing with her now—Dahmer and Campbell. Having a good laugh at her desperate plight.

  Sons of bitches, Helen thought.

  Matthew North was a prostitute, and so was Paone, the decedent. Both being in the trade of male prostitution, maybe they new each other. And the Bible reference—The Great Bear of the north—only completed the suspicion.

  They’re dropping clues so easy it’s almost insulting, she reckoned behind the wheel of her Taurus.